Multicast network Comet hosts Comet Fest ‘23, its first annual multiplatform fan festival, June 16-18. The inaugural event will celebrate Star Trek, and William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk on the original Star Trek, will be interviewed. The festival features TV series, movies and digital experiences on Comet, a sci-fi and fantasy network, across that weekend. 

On Friday, June 16, Comet Fest ‘23 kicks things off with Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in primetime. On June 17, it’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in prime. June 18 features all four movies, starting at 11 a.m., then a primetime preview of new show Grimm. Grimm, which lasted six seasons on NBC, premieres on Comet the next day. 

The Captain’s Closeup, a five-episode docuseries directed and hosted by Shatner, features one-on-one interviews with actors who played Star Trek series captains, including Sir Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula and Chris Pine. It will air following Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn on Day 1 and prior to the film telecasts on Day 2 and Day 3 of the festival. 

Sinclair Broadcast Group owns Comet.

“Star Trek is huge! Some 13 feature films and 11 television series later, fans continue to search out and explore everything Trek,” said Adam Ware, senior VP of Sinclair’s Growth Networks Group. “Broadcasting and streaming the first four movies, the five-episode docuseries, and a special one-on-one interview with the legendary William Shatner is the perfect way to launch Comet’s first annual fandom experience.”

Shatner will be interviewed by Matthew Hoffman, correspondent on Extra and narrator and co-writer of Love Island USA. Viewers will see excerpts from the interview all weekend long during commercial breaks and watch it in its entirety at CometTV.com/CometFest.

Stars on Mars, an unscripted show that sees a group of celebrities try to survive in a setting that looks and feels like the red planet, debuts on Fox Monday, June 5. The “celebronauts,” in Fox’s words, live, eat, sleep and strategize together in the same space station.  William Shatner is the host. 

“Watching celebrities take giant leaps out of their comfort zone and step into the unexpected will no doubt be truly transformational and comical,” Allison Wallach, president of unscripted programming, Fox Entertainment, said when the show was announced. “Throughout, we will learn a lot about these stars, and when you factor in William Shatner leading the charge from Mission Control, we have the makings of a show that’s ready to blast off.” 

The contestants deal with simulated life on Mars, and use their brains, brawn and social skills to tackle challenging missions. One of the celebronauts is sent back to Earth each week, and one will remain standing at the end.  The contestants include Lance Armstrong, Ronda Rousey and Christoper Mintz-Plasse.

Shatner spoke with B+C Multichannel News about Stars on Mars, his own trip into space and what keeps him working at 92. An edited transcript follows. 

B+C: What drew you to Stars on Mars?

William Shatner: Imagine if somebody came to you and said, ‘How would you like to do a show called Stars on Mars?' Would you say no or would you say yes? Stars on Mars, what a great idea!

B+C: Was it the title that drew you initially, or the concept?

WS: The title indicates the concept. 

Interestingly enough, the location the production company chose is in Australia, a desert area known as Coober Pedy, where they have opal mines. I had visited Coober Pedy many, many years ago. It’s so hot that people live underground. I crawled around the tunnels where they were excavating. They had strung light bulbs. The way to get around the terrible heat is to live inside the ground like animals. 

That’s part of what we do on Stars on Mars. 

B+C: I know you’ve hosted various shows over the years. Have you ever hosted a game show or a competition series?

WS: I did. [ABC’s Show Me the Money] was a wondrous show with lots of girls and money. Everything was perfect except for one thing we only discovered after the show was canceled after a short period of time. That was, there was no jeopardy [for contestants] — the contestants had to stay on, they couldn’t get off.  

For Stars on Mars, people are voted off, and the last one remaining is the greatest star in the universe. You have to have jeopardy, somebody has to lose. 

B+C: Do you have influences or even role models in terms of game-show hosts?

WS: We can’t think of this as a game show. It enters into a kind of category that’s out there — people who compete, and if they lose they leave. The whole idea is to stay on as long as possible. What do you call a show where the celebs one-by-one are voted off, and gradually the number declines to one? Is that a game show?

B+C: I would say a competition series. 

WS: Competition series, perfect! This is a competition series. 

B+C: What makes Stars on Mars right for 2023?

WS: Sooner or later — with the latest explosion of a giant rocket it may be a little later than sooner — we’re gonna send astronauts to Mars and have them live there for a while and bring them back. I’m struck by the fact that the Webb Telescope [on Mars] unfurled its mirrors and solar panels, and almost instantly one of those solar panels was struck by a meteorite. That’s how much jeopardy there is in
going to Mars, living on Mars. You’re being pelted all the time. It just takes one of those things to make a bad day. 

I’m told by astronauts that they’ll have shielding, but it’s very dangerous to go there. 

In the competition show there’s an element of danger, but not as much as actually going to Mars. 

B+C: Your trip to space in 2021 — did it turn out to be what you hoped it would?

WS: It was a very profound experience. On that trip, everybody was toasting themselves with champagne, but I emerged from the spaceship weeping. I didn’t know why I was crying but I couldn’t stop. I was embarrassed and had to go sit down someplace. 

What I finally analyzed was, I was in grief for the world. 

That led to the whole entertaining experience at the Kennedy Center, where I sang the song that I and another guy wrote, “So Fragile So Blue,” because I had become aware. We’re told how fragile [Earth] is, but you have to see for yourself how incredibly small this little rock that we live on is. 

When I was a pilot, we were admonished all the time, you can’t go above 12,500 feet  without additional oxygen. You have about two miles of usable air. Above two miles and you’re gonna die! You have this little rock with two miles of usable air. We’re all living on it. We went from a few million human beings to 8 billion and moving up. We’re crowding each other, we’re elbowing each other off the earth. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the land we live on, it is polluted beyond belief. All that becomes abundantly clear. 

B+C: On a lighter note, what are you watching for fun?

WS: Last night I found myself watching a documentary on chimpanzees. The camera work was unbelievable. The chimps themselves are wild. How they behave, their almost humanlike expressions, is astonishing. 

The natural world has dazzled me for the longest time. 

B+C: Do you watch any of the current Star Trek shows?

WS: I have not. I don’t know why I haven’t. 

B+C: What keeps you working at your age? 

WS: I’m really well. I’m healthy. My mind works as well as it ever has, which is somewhat limited. [Laughs.] I’m having great fun!  

Shatner in Space, a one-hour special, will stream on Amazon Prime starting Wednesday, Dec. 15. The special shows William Shatner traveling to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-18 Oct. 12. 

Shatner, who is 90, announced the special at a convention in Brazil. 

“The special details the events before, during, and after Shatner’s life-changing flight—which made him the oldest person to ever travel to the cosmos—and the growing friendship between the Star Trek icon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, whose dreams of space travel, like many, were inspired by the original Star Trek series,” said Amazon. 

Shatner played Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek.

“My time in space was the most profound experience I could have ever imagined,” said Shatner. “This special documenting my journey gives a dramatic view of that experience, and my hope is that it inspires the world to see we must go to space to save Earth.”

Shatner in Space is produced by Amazon Studios, Blue Origin, Film 45, Jason Ehrlich Productions and Bright Spot Content. ■

Cable networks including CNN and Fox News Channel, joined by CBS, NBC, and ABC, trained their cameras and their coverage on the stars Wednesday (Oct. 13) with extensive coverage on cable and special reports on the broadcast networks as Blue Origin sent another star, William Shatner, into space.

Shatner, who at 90 is the oldest person ever to go to space, returned with some eloquent observations, obviously moved, talking about how briefly he saw the beautiful blue of the sky before everything became black. The 90-year-old actor, famous for captaining the U.S.S. Enterprise, TV's most iconic starship, through the original Star Trek‘s make-believe galaxy on NBC and in syndication, pondered whether his rocketing from light into darkness, from the thin blue blanket of atmosphere to the darkness of space, was what death might be like.

CNN’s Miles O’Brien, obviously moved himself by Shatner's description, pointed out that was one of the reasons he has advocated for sending people other than trained scientists — like poets, artists, actors or journalists.

O‘Brien had gotten NASA to agree to let him become the first journalist in space aboard the Space Shuttle, but that was obviated by the 2003 loss of the shuttle Columbia and crew.

CNN noted that as Shatner was about to tell Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos what he found so surprising about the flight, Bezos moved off to grab a bottle of champagne so he could participate in a shake-and-spray celebration before returning to Shatner. After that, there was a touching moment when Shatner thanked him for the opportunity.

Before the flight, Shatner had tweeted a graphic of the Blue Origin feather logo superimposed on the Starfleet emblem from Star Trek, with the poetic message: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself in now & then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

A post-flight Shatner called it a profound experience and a feeling he did not want to lose.

History has stepped into the production ring with famed Rocky star/producer Sylvester Stallone to develop a new scripted series, the network announced during Wednesday’s A+E Networks upfront presentation.

Stallone will executive produce The Tenderloin, which is based on the true story of a turn of the century New York cop Charles Becker, the leader of a Strong-Arm Squad tasked with going to war with the Italian, Irish and Jewish gangs in a violent New York City neighborhood called “The Tenderloin,” according to History.

Stallone took the stage at the A+E Networks upfront Wednesday night at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, speaking of his decades-long interest in Becker and the colorful figures around him.

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“Long before Miranda Rights or the fictional series The Shield, there was the very real Charles Becker, a police officer living by his own moral code,” said Eli Lehrer, Executive Vice President and Head of Programming for History in a statement. “This is a passion project for Sylvester, who has discovered new facts on Becker’s case that shed new light on this infamous anti-hero.”

The network has also announced it is partnering with Star Trek star William Shatner on a new series The UnXplained. The eight-episode series, which Shatner will host and executive produce, will explore the facts behind the world’s most fascinating, strange an inexplicable mysteries.

In addition, the network has greenlit a second season of its unscripted series In Search Of, hosted and executive produced by actor Zachary Quinto.

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Other History announcements include the production of docudramas Washington and The Food That Built America, as well as the return of live event special Evel Live this July. History also announced several off-screen initiatives, including HISTORYTalks, a travelling speaker series; HISTORYSpeaks, featuring podcast companions to its series and specials; and HISTORYCon, a three-day convention that celebrates the country’s cultural, societal and political milestones. Former President George Bush led off the guest speakers at Wednesday night’s upfront, speaking of his love for “the History Channel” and the importance of learning lessons from history.

William Statner is set to join the cast of Syfy's Haven as a guest star on a four-episode arc in 2015, the network announced today.

Haven's mid-season finale airs Dec. 5, and the show airs Fridays at 7 p.m. The series is produced by Entertainment One and Big Motion Pictures in association with Piller/Segan/Shepherd.

The series is based on the novella The Colorado Kid from author Stephen King, and will air 13 new episodes in 2015. Other guest stars include, WWE star Jay Reso, Laura Mennell (Alphas) and Kris Lemche (Joan of Arcadia).